


Beautiful Things

by just_ann_now



Category: Swordspoint - Kushner
Genre: Established Relationship, Ficlet, Moral Ambiguity, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-31
Updated: 2009-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_ann_now/pseuds/just_ann_now
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The phrase "unspeakable things" is a homage to Sprat, and her lovely Yuletide 2009 story <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/36613">"What's Past Is Prologue"</a></p>
    </blockquote>





	Beautiful Things

**Author's Note:**

> The phrase "unspeakable things" is a homage to Sprat, and her lovely Yuletide 2009 story ["What's Past Is Prologue"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/36613)

Jessamyn was a thief, and a skillful one. She was skilled at other things, too, which was why the folk who lived on the Hill, men and women both, invited her into their homes, where she helped herself to various of their possessions. The people she robbed never reported her to the Watch, too embarrassed to admit that a Riverside guttersnipe had ransacked their bedrooms and slipped away while they slept the blissful sleep of the sexually sated.

Jessamyn loved beautiful things, or so she always said, but her idea of beauty didn't quite match Richard's. She had started bringing home small, gaudy items that took her fancy: snuffboxes, porcelain figurines, a red silk dressing-gown trimmed with feathers and seed pearls. She never wore the dressing-gown but kept it draped over the end of the chaise-longue, where it gradually shed feathers disconsolately onto the floor. Sometimes she would just stand and stroke it, gazing out the window, the flimsy fabric snagging on her fingernails.

Richard understood why she brought home these trophies, but that didn't make it any easier for him to put up with. Once he broke a figurine while he was practicing, a self-satisfied looking satyr and nymph, and Jessamyn had been furious. _This is why we can't have nice things, this place is too small, if you could be bothered to take a few more jobs_ \- There was no point in trying to explain to her that he mustn't cheapen himself with trivialities; he was already the best at what he did, even if the word hadn't quite gotten around yet to all of those who mattered.

Someone must have told her about the wedding job he'd turned down, six swordsman in purple velvet. The swordsmen were going to process by height, which, unless there were going to be dwarf-swordsmen, would have put him in the first rank, not even in the best spot, directly in front of the bride. It was ridiculous; he'd laughed in the agent's face and then gone home and viciously decapitated a porcelain spaniel. When Jessamyn returned she'd laid into him, and - well. It was both a good and a bad thing that Kathy Blount had arrived when she did. _She was screaming at me,_ he told her, and she sat him down with a hot drink and went off to find someone to tend to the body. Afterwards he let her have her pick of Jessamyn's possessions, and then boxed up what was left and set it down in the courtyard. It was all gone within a few hours.

After that he'd mopped and scrubbed and dusted, Marie wordlessly providing buckets of hot water and soap. As he worked, he thought things through, just as he did after every bout, pondering what had gone wrong and how he could make sure it never happened again. His temper, that was the issue; he'd never really realized he'd had one before, but Jessamyn had drawn it out, bit by bit, like a thread spun to the breaking point. He'd have to learn to control it; master it just as he'd learned to master his body and the sword that was an extension of it. What happened with Jessamyn must never happen again, no matter what.

When he was done with his housecleaning and self-examination he went out and bought a pair of candlesticks he'd been eyeing, silver dragons holding the candles in their mouths, and spent some time arranging them on the mantlepiece just exactly as he wanted them. Beautiful.

After that came a quiet time, a few jobs but worthwhile ones as his reputation for skill, discretion, and exclusivity grew. There were a number of amorous encounters for the same reasons. When he came into some money he bought a huge antique bed that he had seen and fallen in love with at once. Marie gave him a set of soft linen sheets, rich and smooth as silk; they were embroidered with someone else's initials but that didn't matter to him.

He knew he wanted that young man, too, the ragged scholar whose bitter, sarcastic words should have sounded choppy and sour but instead flowed like honey, delectable to Richard's ear. The contrast fascinated him, as did everything about mysterious Alec. It wouldn't matter if he only had him the once - he wanted to hear that lush drawl crying out, begging for unspeakable things. But after having him once in his bed, sprawled gasping on those sheets under the intricately carved oak and ivy, Richard realized that would not be enough. So he invited him again and again, and after that Alec seemed to invite himself, until one day he arrived, sullen and sodden, a bundle of books and clothes clutched under his dripping cloak.

Later, after they were both warm, Alec got up and unpacked his satchel, draping his clothes over the chaise-longue to dry by the fire. He moved one of the dragon candlesticks to the side as he set his books on the mantlepiece. Richard watched, pleased by the beauty of Alec's long slender body in the firelight, the rightness of the arrangement of the books, the faint gleaming of the silver dragons.


End file.
